Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system, a mobile terminal, and a control method.
Description of the Related Art
In the case where a user uses a host computer to transmit printing data to a network-connected printing apparatus for printing, if the distance from the user's position to the printing apparatus is long, a long amount of time is needed to acquire the printed document. For this reason, there are cases where another user mistakenly retrieves the printed document, or the content of the printed document is viewed by another user.
In view of this, when printing information that the user does not want other people to see, such as confidential information, there are cases where the user uses a function called locked printing (secure printing). In secure printing, print data is transmitted from the host computer to the printing apparatus, but after receiving the print data, the printing apparatus stores it rather than printing it immediately. The user then goes to the location of the printing apparatus and performs user authentication via an operation panel on the printing apparatus, whereafter it is first possible to print the stored print data that the user transmitted. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2009-298090 discloses a technique for realizing secure printing by user authentication performed via an operation panel.
The Bluetooth (registered trademark) standard has been extended in recent years, and the Bluetooth Low Energy (hereinafter, called “BLE”) communication standard has been developed and begun to be implemented in mobile terminals and the like. Features of BLE include the ability to perform low-power communication and the ability to measure the distance between devices.
In conventional secure printing, the user needs to first move to the location of the printing apparatus and perform an operation on the operation panel such as inputting their password or scanning an IC card or the like. Also, since the user cannot execute printing unless they move to the location of the printing apparatus, even in the case of printing one page, the user needs to first go to the location of the printing apparatus and then wait until the document can be acquired.